


Three Faces of Eve

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: DCU, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, BAMF Three Face, Bechdel Test Pass, Conspiracy, Earth-3, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Madness, Multiple Personalities, Origin Story, Teen Pregnancy, lack of informed medical consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1542875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evelyn Dent vanished from Jackie's life when she was sixteen. By the time they met again he was the Jokester and she was Three-face and the daughter he didn't know they had was fifteen. </p><p>The story of how a vulnerable teenager became obsessed with taking down the Owlman and turned into one of Gotham's greatest heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eve

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't describe what multiple personality disorders are like with any accuracy at all. I had to chose between canon accuracy and medical accuracy and in this case I chose the canon. 
> 
> Also I let a morally-inverted gender switched obscure Marvel character into Earth-3. Sorry about that.

 

It’s almost eight and it’s pitch black already, October in Gotham city.

 

She’s sixteen and the bus is late and all she can think about is that she’s going to miss the Eddie Hair Show tonight.

 

An hour ago and a lifetime away she was in a GP’s clinic. A kindly looking, horribly _earnest_ woman was talking to her about her _options_ but she can hardly remember it. Her brain feels like cotton wool and try as she might she can’t recall what the Doctor actual said past those two awful words.

 

You’re pregnant.

 

And she knows she should be thinking about real, solid, sensible things; about abortion versus adoption, about what her Dad will yell and whether her Mum will kick her out, about what Jackie will say and think and what Jackie’s Dad will do to them if he finds out and she needs to tell someone but there’s no one to tell. Her life is over. No school anymore, no sneaking out anymore, no-

 

But somehow when she tries to concentrate on those things they fade away.

 

She’s sixteen, the bus is late.

 

She’s pregnant.

 

And all she can think about is how she’s going to miss the Eddie Hair Show.

 

000

 

She can’t face it. She just can’t. It’s too much and she doesn’t know what to do.

 

She’s been quiet. She’s avoided Jackie, because she knows that if she saw him she’d tell him and then there’d be no going back.

 

She wants to get rid of this thing growing in her belly, because in some way she imagines that destroying it will undo everything and make her life normal again, which is stupid because she lives in Gotham, the city where your friends can get cut up by a masked man for no good reason and nothing is ever normal here.

 

If she gets rid of it it will be like this whole thing never happened, and no one will know.

 

Except her.

 

000

 

_She was afraid. Looking back it was stupid, a dumb childish mistake to be so frightened and to let that fear drive her out and away into Gotham’s wet streets. But at the time it felt so right._

_She ran from everything, from her life, her family, her friends. From Jackie._

_She ran because she was Eve, and Eve was weak. Eve shivered in gutters and begged uncaring pedestrians for pennies. Eve ate things she found in dustbins because she let herself starve. Eve cowered behind skips and under rubbish when she heard the other bums coming. Eve was so terrified of the consequences of her actions that she couldn’t bear to admit them, not to anyone who would have helped, not to anyone who cared. So she lived on the streets while her belly grew._

_Eve left everything too late._

_So when Eve finally looked for help, it was in the wrong place._

 

000

 

They find her in a soup kitchen, trying to hide a bulge under layers of thinning tattered jumpers.

 

They want her to come to their clinic. They offer free check ups, free scans. They say they’re doing a study, they say they’re in desperate need of volunteers.

 

They say they can have the baby adopted by a good family, or she could keep it, they run shelters, they know people, could help her get a job, get a room somewhere-

 

She should know it’s too good to be true.

 

But she’s afraid and she thinks she has hit rock bottom, thinks she has seen the worst that life and Gotham can offer.

 

She agrees without hesitation. She wants to get away. She wants what is best for herself, for her baby.

 

So she goes with them, to a clinic, not all that far away.

 

She sits impassive through a battery of tests and measurements, a sea of ice cold jelly smeared over her bump.

 

They tell her that there is a problem, that something is wrong with her baby. They tell her they will help, that it won’t cost her a thing. They assure her that with their help both she and her baby will be fine.

 

She is scared.

 

She agrees to be one of their volunteers, in exchange for soothing words from doctors, a roof and meals.

 

And loses her last chance of ever being just Eve.

 

000

 

There are twenty three women in the clinic. Six of them are younger than her.

 

The clinic is light and airy and spotlessly clean. The rooms are single ensuites with carpets her bare feet sink into an inch deep. There’s a picture of a Caribbean sunset on the wall. She hasn’t seen anything so beautiful for months.

 

But none of the girls who can afford to rent sleep in the clinic.

 

She dreams of a monstrous shadow, night after night, chasing her through the corridors. She dreams of owls, of a silent darkness hiding sharp claws. She dreams of a man ripping her belly open and stealing her bloody crying child.

 

She dreams more vividly and more frequently than she ever has before.

 

The Doctors say it’s stress. Suppressed fear from the streets finally leaking out from her subconscious now she’s safe.

 

But none of the girls who can afford to rent sleep in the clinic.

 

And the nightmares don’t stop.

 

When she talks to the other girls they tell her they have nightmares. They tell her in their dreams they’re chased through the clinic corridors by towering, hideous owls.

 

000

 

The other girls leave. The dreams make them all afraid to sleep. The Doctors give them as many sedatives as they dare.

 

She doesn’t know how long it has been since she slept well. She has become used to the deep, bone tiredness, to the flitting shadows in the corners of her vision, the dizzying headaches, the shaking. She finds herself checking the ceilings of her room for birds.

 

She wakes at odd hours and wanders the clinic to escape the owls.

 

She sees the corridor on her wanderings and wonders if she is asleep or awake.

 

She looks for owls, for shadows. There are none. So she walks slowly to the end of the corridor and opens the door.

 

000

 

It’s a room almost exactly like her own; a little bigger to accommodate the bulky, bleeping life support. There’s a woman on the bed, a few years older and a few months further along. There’s a mask over her face, wires over her breasts and head, tubes tapped into her veins-

 

She lurches forwards, stares at the chart on the bed until it’s forced into letters.

 

Her name is Marcy Andrews. She is twenty two. She is six months pregnant. She is blood type AB. She can’t move below the neck. Her dark eyes are wide-

 

Her expression makes Eve shake.

 

Then there’s the voice-

 

Eve runs, out of the room, back down the corridor to her own bed, chased by shadows and haunted by dark eyes.

 

000

 

She sees Marcy in her dreams. She screams and runs through the clinic corridors, stretched endless by sleep while Marcy staggers after her, weighed down by her belly. And the owls flutter in the shadows-

 

“PLEASE! HELP ME!” Marcy yells.

 

Eve runs.


	2. Julie

 

Marcy is in her dreams every night. She stops pleading but she has begun to do.........something else. Eve doesn’t know what.

 

But she can feel it.

 

She feels it like a slow slide to madness. A voice in the very back of her mind growing louder and louder until she fears it will drown her out.

 

It sounds like Eve, but it is not Eve. The voice is angry and harsh. Eve is never harsh and fear paralyses her, freezing out anger.

 

The voice will not let her body run anymore. The voice-

 

The voice makes her turn and shout at Marcy.

 

“What the _hell_ do you _want_?!” The voice brims over with violence, it tries to take her forwards, nose to nose with Marcy, but Eve holds it back.

 

“I need your help!” Marcy begs.

 

“And why should I help _you_ **mutie**?”

 

Marcy lurches backwards, but the voice presses on.

 

“You think I couldn’t _feel_ what you were doing to _me-_ to _us_? You think I don’t _know_ what you’re trying to do? Messing with _our_ head until you _make_ us help you?”

 

“I didn’t- I didn’t mean-” Marcy begins.

 

A little bit of Eve slips and they edge forwards, she and the voice, they sneak slow and menacing up to Marcy.

 

Eve knows that she could never set her shoulders the way the voice does, clench her jaw and tense her fists- If Eve tried to do these things she would look clumsy, laughable. When the voice does them they look like a monster, Eve can see it in Marcy’s big dark eyes.

 

They lean close, their pink lips brushing the soft brown flesh of Marcy’s cheek. In the dream Marcy smells of cinnamon, in reality she smells of hospital beds-

 

“Get out of our dreams.” The voice whispers in a tone that sends chills up Eve’s spine.

 

They pull back. The voice smiles.

 

“Wait!” Marcy calls and her next words come out in a rush, so fast they would make no sense outside of a dream-

 

“He’s going to take your baby.”

 

000

 

The voice thinks it’s a trick. Eve has to wrest back control to turn them around.

 

Marcy stares and then the words come out all at once. “It’s Owlman, you have to believe me please God you’ve got to believe me-”

 

“Why would he want this?” The voice says, putting Eve’s hand over the bump on their belly. “Why would a criminal want children?”

 

“Not children,” Marcy’s voice drops as if he might hear them even in dreams. “Mutants.”

 

They stiffen.

 

“My baby’s no mutie.” The voice snarls.

 

“Please,” Marcy says.

 

“Shut up.” The voice says.

 

It’s enough to make anyone cut off their ears, all these _other_ alien arguing sounds, all these foreign breaths in one small skull. Eve puts her hands over her ears, but it’s a dream so she still hears the voice perfectly.

 

“Now look what you’ve done. You’ve upset _her._ Not that it’s difficult-”

 

“Listen to me please,” Marcy begs. “You have to get them out, everybody-”

 

“Why don’t _you_ do it mutie,” The voice spits.

 

“I tried.” Marcy whispers.

 

When she wakes up, tangled and sweating and afraid, Eve can still hear it. Marcy’s sad desperate pleas like an echo. The voice’s ferocious growls like trauma bubbling at the back of her mind.

 

And she knows she’s going mad.

 

000

 

Eve wants to leave.

 

She’s afraid of the Centre now; she feels that the doctors are watching her, staring at her, lying to her. She sees owls fluttering in the corners of her vision and feels their hard yellow eyes on her even though she can never quite get a clear look at them.

 

But she knows that if she leaves the owls will follow her. She is afraid of the streets, she is afraid of the owls.

 

The voice tells her that she is being paranoid, that she is stupid and useless and a shivering, snivelling coward.

 

Eve cries, but the voice does not make her leave. The voice has not made up her mind yet; she is angry at Marcy.

 

They go to Marcy’s room together in the day. They sit by Marcy’s bed.

 

Eve has nothing to say, so the voice talks.

 

“OK mutie, you’re right there is something wrong here, but I’m not just going to take your word that it’s Owlman stealing mutie-scum so you’re going to give me whatever passes for evidence in that drugged-addled brain and then I _might_ decide to help.”

 

They sit waiting for Marcy to talk.

 

The ventilator hisses. The monitors bleep. Marcy does not move.

 

“Come on you God-damned telepath,” The voice grumbles. “What’s the matter, can’t you hear me?”

 

The ventilator hisses and Marcy is silent.

 

After a while they leave. Eve shivers and the voice swears and somewhere in the background the doctors are watching them.

 

000

 

“I’m not telepathic.” Marcy tells them when they finally sleep. “I- Telepathy is conscious and I can only use the subconscious, it’s all feelings and dreams.”

 

The voice snorts. Eve screws up her tattered courage enough to speak.

 

“How do you know that they’re-” She can’t bring herself to say it.

 

“They took me, I’d gone to get some coffee and- He broke my neck.”

 

Marcy’s hand flutters up to her atlas bone, shivers like a sparrow’s heart beat. “They put me in there and I can’t move but they all fall asleep eventually and I- I can make people dream.”

 

“You did more than that to us.” The voice says, in her low, dangerous purr.

 

But Marcy shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have......pushed. But I- I didn’t make you, I only use what’s already there I can’t- I can’t put anything new in someone else’s head. If you didn’t know what an owl was you’d have seen something else in your dreams, a bat may be. No, I didn’t make you. I just.......brought you forward.”

 

Eve doesn’t like it. She wants to scream that she’s not like that, that there’s nothing as raw and vicious and angry as the voice in her head. That the voice is not part of her and never was. That she’d never use a dirty word like mutie, she’d never threaten someone, she’s a nice young woman. A good girl.

 

The voice laughs.

 

000

 

The voice believes it, Eve does not.

 

Eve was never any good with computers, but she doesn’t need to be because Marcy is in everyone’s dreams and if she does things properly they’ll tell her their secrets without even knowing they spoke. And an awful lot of women in these clinics seem to have abortions in the 20th week. And most of them seem to stay at the clinic for another 16 weeks-

 

It makes the voice angry. Eve can’t believe that anyone, any doctor would do- would- They’re talking about children, new born babies and pregnant mothers, surely no one could-

 

The voice disagrees. It’s happening and it makes her furious.

 

What disturbs Eve is that she, the voice, isn’t angry at the injustice of it, the horror of the possibility. She’s angry that anyone would try and do this to _them_ , to herself and poor little Evelyn who she happens to share a body with.

 

How dare they.

 

Eve is the terrified, the voice is angry, together they go to Marcy.

 

000

 

_She was angry. But looking back they had concluded that she had probably originally been Eve’s suppressed anger._

_She acted quickly, without thought where Eve shivered and froze. She was hard and animal and cruel. She was hasty and arrogant and quickly became obsessed. She was as dangerous to them as she was to others._

_So perhaps it was a good thing that Julie and Eve were not left alone for long._


	3. Maria

Eve notices the doctors first; she senses them as a restlessness in the fluttering owls. The voice is too angry to care.

 

“Let them,” She hisses to Eve, fingers flexing into and out of fists.

 

Eve wants to run. The voice will not let them. They wander into Marcy’s room, stand over Marcy’s bed.

 

“Alright,” The voice grumbles. “You’re right, now what? I suppose you want me to get you out of here?”

 

The question hangs in the air, Marcy can not answer.

 

Eve keeps trying to tell her that it’s crazy; there’s no way they can get out themselves, the centre is locked at night and Marcy can’t move and neither can the spider’s web of wires and tubes keeping her anchored to the world. The voice growls, ferocity and indignation spilling over into the air. They will leave, tonight, all of them, she insists, and Heaven can _try_ and help anyone who gets in their way.

 

They clash, an extreme and deficiency of Aristotle’s virtues. Words spill out of their mouth, sentences shunting between one and the other. Their gestures snap their arms in opposing directions so quickly it is a wonder they don’t break something.

 

Eventually they tire and the answer occurs to them. They pull a chair beside Marcy’s bed and slump into it. They close their eyes.

 

Eve prays for a quick slip into sleep.

 

Julie dares the owls down from their corners.

 

000

 

They know they’re asleep when they see Marcy.

 

“It’s impossible,” Eve stammers. “We can’t, the- I’m not a doctor, and your life support-”

 

“You look like a corpse,” Julie interrupts. “People notice corpses.”

 

Marcy smiles a small sad smile. “Not in Gotham.”

 

“They do if Owlman’s asking.”

 

“Please.” Marcy says.

 

“How?” They say.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Silence lasts far longer in dreams.

 

“I don’t know,” Marcy says again. “I- I tried not to think about it, because no one ever answered so it didn’t matter but-”

 

Eve tenses, Julie sneers. They feel something, something Eve recognises. The slightest maddening pressure in the head. Like insect feet kneading their brain. Like the slow slide to madness. Like whispers growing to a scream.

 

The last voice pulls their lips apart for a gulp of air so huge and sudden it wakes them.

 

Eve wants to shriek until they go away, until they leave her alone in the blessed silence of her own skull.

 

Julie wants to snap, to ask this intruder in _their_ body what exactly she thinks she’s doing.

 

Neither of them can.

 

000

 

They sneak around the edges, groping to find the nature of the thing moving their body. She does not shrink like Eve does. She does not loom like Julie does. She holds their face blank and serene, a living mask.

 

She stands staring down at Marcy for a long time, considering.

 

In the corners the owls flutter. Outside they hear footsteps, doctors-

 

Steady and silent she slips an IV out of Marcy’s arm. She crouches behind the bed.

 

She waits until the doctor; there is only one set of footfalls, walks to Marcy’s bed. And she surges forward, her left hand grasps a handful of his hair pulling harder then Eve thought they were capable of. He is too surprised to make a sound. So her right hand rises sharply to slip the long needle through the soft spot behind his ear and into his brain.

 

The body falls over Marcy and they watch as she wipes her hands on Marcy’s bed clothes and straightens. And considers.

 

000

 

“I’m sorry.” She says finally.

 

She gets up. Julie thinks they’re going to leave Marcy and good riddance and it would have been impossible to move her anyway. Eve wants desperately to help the woman trapped on the bed, but she can’t think of a way. Maria can.

 

She takes them up to the wall, carefully rolling the machines to one side. There is a large knot of cables, the veins of life support, twisting around the socket, pumping electrons through the blinking, bleeping machines, moving blood and air through a broken body in the delicate alchemic mix that divides people from cadavers.

 

Swift, graceful and precise, Maria pulls the plugs from the wall. The room plunges into the silence of disappearing background noise.

 

The owls freeze in fear.

 

“What-what the _hell_ have you done?” Julie stammers.

 

“Saved her.” Maria replies.

 

000

 

They do not kick down doors or break windows. They sneak into one of the new girl’s rooms and take a can of aerosol deodorant. They set the fire alarm off in an empty room then file out into the corridor with the small sleepy herd of women. They follow the drove through the doors that unlock automatically out into the car park and the cold.

 

It is pitch black outside, Gotham’s sky is cloaked in a low cloud, her streets in a fine, constant drizzle.

 

It occurs to Eve that she has not seen the Eddie Hair Show for over three months.

 

They drift away into the alley ways. It is cold and wet but Maria has a core of steel and could weather hurricanes without complaint, Julie would never let a little thing like nature, or for that matter the world, win. Eve is tired and scared and sad, like a deep damp in her bones, but they are strong and they will not let her cave.

 

They walk for a long time.

 

They stop to look in dustbins on the way.

 

Julie cuts their hair. Maria finds other clothes.

 

Within three hours they have somehow persuaded a group of squatters to give them a roof and a meal.

 

“We should stop them.” Maria says when they’re alone.

 

“I want to see them burn.” Julie growls. “All of them.”

 

“Petrol costs money.” Maria tells her.

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“We’ll make them pay.” Maria agrees. “When we’re ready, not before.”

 

Eventually Eve pulls them into an exhausted sleep.

 

They don’t dream.

 

000

 

_They moved between squats, never staying in one place too long, never making friends._

_Their daughter was born in an old warehouse by the Docks in late June. A Gemini. They called her Duela._

_Sometimes they left her with people they believed trustworthy when they went out at night. Mostly they left her where she would be safe, where she would not be found._

_They took the money from drug dealers who Julie took an especial pleasure in beating to a pulp._

_Guns were so easy to find in Gotham, and Maria has excellent aim._

_It scared Eve at first, the screams, the blood, Julie’s terrible vengeance and Maria’s ice cold morality. But then it occurred to her that it also scared the owls, terrified them into stillness and silence._

_And so perhaps they have already won._


End file.
